In the process of shipping one or more articles from one location to another, a packer typically places some type of dunnage material in a shipping container, such as a cardboard box, along with the article or articles to be shipped. The dunnage material partially or completely fills the empty space or void volume around the articles in the container. The dunnage material prevents or minimizes movement of the articles that might be damaged during the shipping process. Some commonly used dunnage materials include plastic airbags and converted paper dunnage material.
To promote continuous operation, many dunnage conversion machines, whether producing airbags or paper dunnage material, output a strip of dunnage that can be cut or severed to provide sections of dunnage of desired lengths. When using the dunnage material to block or brace a relatively large and/or heavy item during shipping, the strip of dunnage may be rolled up in a coil configuration. The coil of dunnage may then be placed in the shipping container beside, above, or below the large/heavy item to be shipped. While coils of cushioning product can be produced by hand, such a procedure can consume a significant amount of time and/or space and manual coiling can lead to inconsistent properties in the coil. Consequently, automated coiling mechanisms have been developed to address one or more of these or other problems.
International Patent Application Publication No. WO 99/21702 describes a system for coiling a strip of cushioning produced by a cushioning conversion machine. A sheet stock material provided from a roll is converted into a strip of relatively lower density cushioning material, which is then wound about a mandrel into a coiled configuration. An automated taping device for securing the trailing end of the strip of cushioning to the coil and an automated coil-ejection device are both suggested in this publication, but the details of such a hypothetical device are neither shown nor described.